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Saturday, June 14, 2008

Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- Liberal Hero

From the time FDR took office in 1933, he absolutely refused to desegregate the government. His predecessor, Woodrow Wilson, brought Jim Crow to Washington. Wilson instituted separate facilities -- like drinking fountains and restrooms -- for blacks. He moved black employees into their own buildings or, if that wasn't possible, had partitions set up around them. The Republican platform of June 24, 1940 called for integration of the armed forces, but for the balance of his time in office, FDR refused to order it. FDR refused to even endorse a federal anti-lynch law, saying it would cause him to lose southern votes.

By contrast, on September 15, 1981, Reagan established the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, to increase African-American participation in federal education programs. On June 29th, 1982, Reagan signed a 25-year extension of 1965 Voting Rights Act -- which Democrats originally opposed.

And, let's not forget how FDR threw 110,000 loyal Japanese-Americans into concentration camps, seized their properties and turned their property and possessions over to whites.

On August 10, 1988, President Reagan signed Civil Liberties Act of 1988, compensating Japanese-Americans for deprivation of civil rights and property during World War II internment ordered by FDR.

It would seem Roosevelt had preconceived (and racist) prejudices against the Japanese:

"Anyone who has traveled to the Far East knows that the mingling of Asiatic blood with European or American blood produces, in nine cases out of ten, the most unfortunate results. . . . The argument works both ways. I know a great many cultivated, highly educated and delightful Japanese. They have all told me that they would feel the same repugnance and objection to have thousands of Americans settle in Japan and intermarry with the Japanese as I would feel in having large numbers of Japanese coming over here and intermarry with the American population. In this question, then, of Japanese exclusion from the United States it is necessary only to advance the true reason--the undesirability of mixing the blood of the two peoples. . . . The Japanese people and the American people are both opposed to intermarriage of the two races--there can be no quarrel there." -- Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1925

And then, there was the appointment of former KKK lawyer, U.S. Senator Hugo Black, to the Supreme Court. Black was not qualified for the position, but FDR knew he would never oppose his socialist and unconstitutional New Deal policies. It was Black who suddenly discovered the concept of separation of church and state in the Constitution, a bogus "right" that still divides the country today.

AND, despite all the intelligence reports, FDR absolutely refused to talk about what the Nazis were doing to European Jews. He refused to change immigration laws to provide Jews a safe haven in the United States. No mystery there. Roosevelt was raised among the New England wealthy, where Jews were "restricted" -- not allowed to go to the night clubs and other social gatherings of the anti-Semitic elite.